


Cratered

by Quinntessentially



Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling
Genre: (truth curses more accurately), Communication, Lack of Communication, M/M, Truth Spells, a non-tragic ending, strong emotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29697981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinntessentially/pseuds/Quinntessentially
Summary: Kenny’s stuck in his head like a song, again. Trapped up there with all the things Matt wants to say and knows that Kenny doesn’t want to hear — won’t hear, even if Matt says them plainly.
Relationships: Matt Jackson/Kenny Omega
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Cratered

**Author's Note:**

> this was one of those fics that didn't want to happen, but it happened. it was also a nightmare to tag. please take it on faith that people know about magic in this 'verse, but it's not particularly common. anyway i am once again giving a shoutout to [sin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturatedsinset/pseuds/saturatedsinset) without whom this fic would have won the fight and not existed at all

The sun is beating down on the pavement outside and Matt wishes Arizona felt a little more like home.

There’s a show tonight, and they’re out at some local Mexican restaurant that isn’t as good as the Mexican restaurant by his house, and every time Kenny takes another sip of his water Matt feels his eyes cling to the bob of his Adam’s apple. Music is playing, just faint enough to be annoying.

Kenny takes another pull of water, half-exaggerated like everything else he does. 

Matt does his best not to sigh like a lovelorn teenager. Nick sends him a half-pitying and half-exasperated look, so it probably didn’t work. 

He eats another tortilla chip, mutinous. The orange glow of the sun shines in his eyes, and it keeps shining in his eyes as they pile in the car. Kenny’s next to him in the backseat, laughing even though the heat must be scorching him.

They wind up back at the venue and Matt’s not in any better of a mood. Kenny’s stuck in his head like a song, again. Trapped up there with all the things Matt wants to say and knows that Kenny doesn’t want to hear — won’t hear, even if Matt says them plainly.

Nick’s got people to talk to about tech stuff and obviously he can see Matt’s feeling foul so he dumps him in the first common area he can find. It’s got a potted plant, nice, but it’s also got Hangman Page so Matt mentally marks it down.

Adam’s clearly in his head about his match and drinking over it, and Matt’s so frustrated. He smiles, knows that it’s reading just as unfriendly as he wants.

“Come on,” Adam says. “Find somewhere else if you’re going to be all like that.”

“I’m not being like anything,” Matt says. Kenny didn’t look at him once in the car ride over and that doesn’t mean anything and Matt’s still sore.

Adam drops it for a few seconds, then picks it right back up. “You kind of did this to yourself.”

“I don’t have to talk to you,” Matt snaps. Sighs. Can’t bring himself to apologize. He doesn’t like Adam, and it’s not like Adam would give hime the time of day. Better just to leave — maybe there’s a segment of BTE to be found in this trash fire of a day.

“Christ,” says Adam, hangdog. “You don’t talk to Nick, you don’t talk to Kenny, I know you wouldn’t talk to me.”

Matt’s hand is on the doorknob. He feels his neck twitch. Swallows, and something that isn’t there slides down his neck. It settles in his chest as he pushes into the bustle outside, like there was a gap in his clavicle that just got filled with lake water. He’s running on too much frustration to do anything but gasp. If Adam hears it, Matt doesn’t want to know. Better just to try and find Nick and figure out how to lose himself before the show starts in earnest. It’s always easier to be himself around Nick. He barely even feels a twinge when he realizes Kenny isn’t there yet, and then flat-out isn’t there as their entrance music hits.

The crowd cheering makes something spark behind Matt’s eyes, the pleasant rush of being adored. He smiles and poses and it isn’t quite forced. But Kenny’s not watching.

It’s not the Bucks’ best match and it’s not their worst match. Matt kind of hopes every match is going to be their best match, and he and Nick are plenty in-sync, but they just don’t have a lot to click with on character work right now. The pleasure of wrestling, of flinging himself up and then down, of telling a _story_ to thousands of people is enough and more.

But however good wrestling a match makes him feel, it does nothing at all for the thing massed in his chest. This is how people who get heart attacks should feel just before it happens — no radiating shoulder pain, just the tidal knowledge that something is wrong and it’s not getting better.

“I need you to handle the post-match everything,” Matt hisses to Nick as the ref raises their hands.

The ref glances his way. “Everything okay, son?”

Matt smiles harder. “Oh, it’s —“ and the word that should come out of his mouth is “fine.” The word he’s intending to say is “fine.”

What he actually says is, “Oh, it’s this thing in my chest.”

Nick doesn’t turn his head to stare at Matt, because he’s a professional and the crowd is recording, but Matt catches the tiny jerk that says he really wants to. 

The ref frowns.

“No, I’m joking,” Matt tries to say, because he doesn’t want a rumor that he’s got a tumor or something getting around. Turns out it doesn’t matter because the words get trapped in the lake in his chest. His smile of triumph freezes solid. 

“I’m joking,” Matt doesn’t say, again. 

He wishes he could hear a pin drop, but the crowd is just screaming louder. Everyone’s cheering for him and something’s wrong with him. Something went wrong with Matt, and who knows if it was twenty minutes ago or thirty years ago.

The walk offstage is tense in Matt’s ribcage. Backstage isn’t much better.

“What’s going on?” Nick says. He’s brusque in the way that usually means he’s afraid.

“Nothing,” Matt tries to say.

“It’s in my chest,” Matt says. Swallows wetly. “It’s bad. A curse, I think. Making it so I can’t say some things. Changing my words.”

Nick gives him a second even as he starts smoothing his hair, picking through a tangle. Fidgety hands. “Do you need a doctor?”

“I don’t think so,” Matt says. “I think it’s just making me tell the truth.”

He leaves out how scared he is of that.

“Oh,” Nick says, looking like he understands why Matt’s feeling a little fragile inside right now. Maybe he does. Matt doesn’t need to say Kenny’s name to be talking about him.

It’s so hard to get the words out, even with a curse helping him along. “I… don’t know how to deal with this.”

Nick’s arm over his shoulders is comfortable. Matt doesn’t lie with his body, and neither does Nick. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.”

The Uber is fine. The kind of rain that can’t decide if it’s really falling makes spotty patterns on the asphalt.

“I don’t like this,” Nick says as soon as the door closes.

“You think I do?” Questions are safe. Can’t be lies. He’s got to have a game plan if he’s going to keep up appearances. Besides wrestling, they’re about the only thing he has.

Nick sighs, and it twists something inside of Matt. “Don’t even know why it happened. Who did it.”

“Neither do I.” Matt scratches under the seatbelt, absent-minded. “Last person I talked to before our match was you… and then Page.”

“Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’d do this, Matt,” Nick says. There’s a weird quality to his voice, sad and half-knowing. 

“Don’t ‘Matt,’” me,” Matt snaps. “It makes sense.”

“Didn’t say it doesn’t.” Nick shrugs. “He’s not a bad guy, though. Don’t get why you hate him so much. Bygones.”

“He held Kenny in place while Cody took a fucking chair to his head,” Matt says in a furious whisper.

Nick’s eyes look like they’re catching the rain outside. “You and Kenny,” he says, like it’s a complete thought.

Something grinds in Matt’s chest. “I know he’s hung up on Ibushi. If I could stop feeling this way, I…“ his voice dies off. “I wouldn’t. Shit.”

Nick’s face is blank and bathed in shadow. The rest of the car ride is silent. They pile out of the car onto dark streets lit with the blue glow from the hotel’s sign.

“Sorry,” Nick says in the elevator.

“I’m sorry too.” Matt breathes out. “And you know that I mean it.”

“Why?” Nick seems honestly curious. “I mean, why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know,” Matt says. “Putting you through this, I guess.”

Nick looks like he wants to say something, but the elevator dings. Their hotel room looks the same as any other. The hotel toiletries smell about the same as anywhere else’s as Matt gets in his hilariously belated post-match shower. There’s just a mass in his chest, persistent. Not angry, just weighty. Reminding him that it’s there.

It’s luxurious flopping down on the hotel bed, getting the pillows damp.

Matt doesn’t think much about it when he sees Nick text someone, and then he starts thinking about it when he sees Nick glance over at him every few seconds, and then he gets really suspicious when Nick asks him what his star sign is.

“Pisces,” Matt says without thinking about it, then “Wait, what?”

“You’ll get weird if I tell you,” Nick says with a rehearsed air. “It’s about your curse.”

“Who’re you texting?”

“Secret.” Nick glances up. “Is the curse causing you any pain?”

“No,” Matt says. “I’d really love to be able to not answer these questions, you know.”

“You have to answer questions people ask you?”

“Seems like it!” Matt rolls over, resists the urge to bury his head under the pillow. “You text your mystery person and I’ll get some sleep.”

Nick’s looking concerned. Matt’s perfectly free to lie in his own head, so he’ll say that he doesn’t care.

The lights are still on but Matt can sleep anywhere. And he’s determined, which helps. He falls asleep to Nick’s breathing and the rattle of the ice machine a couple floors down.

Nick shakes him awake at — he fumbles for his phone on the nightstand — at four in the morning. His whole body is stiff from the match, which is what he gets for not seeing a doctor afterwards. 

“Get up,” Nick whispers. Matt can’t make out his face in the dark, but he can feel his hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t want to,” Matt mumbles, but he rolls sufficiently far to get his feet on the floor. “What’s going on?”

“Adam can help.” Nick throws his shoes at him, and he’s lucky that Matt’s got good reflexes.

“I ha—“ god, but he doesn’t hate Adam. Matt knows what hate feels like, and he reserved it long ago for people who break him or break Nick. Adam’s not good enough for that. “He’s not worth our time.”

“Too bad,” Nick says. The sharpness in his voice takes Matt aback. “You’re cursed, probably, and you’re sucking it up so we can get it fixed.”

“Thanks,” says Matt. He means for it to be sarcastic. It doesn’t come out that way.

“Just get out the door.” There’s a smile in Nick’s voice now. Huh.

The lights are still on in the hotel hallway. Matt stumbles over his own feet in the glare, but he’s got his bearings by the time Nick leads him three floors down and then several rooms deep.

“He didn’t really say what he was going to do to help,” Nick says. “But I trust him.”

“I don’t,” Matt says, and is relieved when it comes out how he means for it to.

Half a second too early for him to protest, though, they’re at the door. Nick shoves him toward it. “Go on. Go on!”

“Let me knock first or something, jeez.” The wood of the door is surprisingly cool. The rustling and faint swearing from inside as someone makes his way to the door is not.

“Hey, guys,” Adam says when he swings the door open. “Fancy seeing you here!”

Matt keeps his mouth shut.

“Come on in!” Adam’s ruthlessly uncalculated at the best of times, but Matt’s pretty sure he’s swaying back and forth. 

“One minute,” Matt smiles, pulls Nick aside. “This is the guy you trust to fix whatever — whatever magic thing went wrong with me?”

Nick glares, like Matt hasn’t been glaring five years longer. “Kenny said to! Kenny, Matt. C’mon.”

“I need —“ nope. “I want you to promise that you’ll bail me out when —“ nope. “— if he does anything to, I don’t know, kill our chances as a tag-team.”

“Of course I promise,” Nick says. It makes a small bitter part of Matt uncurl, unfortunately. 

“Fine.” Matt pushes off towards the door, where Adam’s watching them with blank eyes. “We doing this or what?”

It’s not until the door shuts behind him that he realizes that Nick’s not there and that Adam’s — well, he won’t say he’s a better wrestler. He’s a stronger wrestler. Something akin to dread pools in Matt’s jaw. It’s dark in Adam’s room, just a bedside lamp on and the moonlight filtering through the curtains.

“I, uh, so Nick said you’d been cursed,” Adam says, swaying. “Or, well, Kenny said — I can fix it. Or tell you how to fix it.”

“Spit it out,” Matt says with bravado that he doesn’t really feel and anger that he does.

Adam winces. “You gotta — the curse makes you tell the truth, right? So I need you to lie to me.”

“But I can’t,” Matt points out. “Because the curse makes me tell the truth. Changes my words. _Twists_ them.”

“Just do it,” Adam says. “Hah. Like Nike.”

Maybe it’s the way the dread has been slowly morphing into fear as the thing in his chest doesn’t change, or the way the shadows on the wall are swaying just off-time from Hangman, but Matt opens his mouth and tries to say, “I’m not afraid.”

And, of course, what comes out is, “I’m afraid.”

Adam’s eyes suddenly seem sharper. “Yeah, like that.”

“I’m fine,” he tries to say, and the thing that comes out is, “there’s something wrong with me.”

His chest is so cold, like the lake is freezing over, or swelling from winter rain.

“I — I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and it gets caught in his chest, and what comes out is, “I’m in love with Kenny.”

“Oh.” Adam sits down on the bed. “Oh, that — shit, that one’s it.”

Matt barely hears him. “What’s wrong with me is… I’m in love with Kenny.”

There’s desert outside, past the city, and Matt feels like the wind howling through it. 

“Hey!” Adam snaps his fingers like Matt’s a dog, or a spacey child. “The curse is — just because you think it’s true doesn’t mean it’s true, man.”

There’s a sound like laughter coming from Matt’s mouth, but it can’t be laughter because he’s not happy.

“We’re all a little in love with Kenny,” Adam says, and oh, there’s an arm on Matt’s shoulders pressing him to sit down on the bed. “It’s not fucked up.”

“A little?” Matt says. The laughter is getting uncomfortably close to crying, now.

“Aw, shit,” Adam says. The arm around his shoulders is back, heavy and jostling. “Uh. Uh, you should tell him.”

There’s not a sound except Matt’s increasingly shaky breathing and the whine of a siren outside.

“…I think it might fix this,” Adam ventures. “Like one big truth. Prove to the curse that you can tell the truth.”

“It’s four in the morning,” Matt says. There aren’t tears drying on his cheeks, because he wasn’t crying. He doesn’t cry, not when he skins his knees and not when he wrenches them and — and Kenny Omega shouldn’t mean anything to him other than friendship and that’s just it, isn’t it.

Kenny’s not supposed to be anything other than a friend. He’s got Ibushi, back in Japan, back in his thoughts, back in his Twitter DMs, probably.

“I can’t,” Matt whispers, broken. “I can’t tell him.”

It’s cold, cold comfort that the words come out how he means for them to.

Adam’s looking at him with heartbreak eyes and who’s he to judge Matt. He didn’t stick by Kenny through years. He held Kenny in place while Cody tried to take a steel chair to his head.

Blindly — not with tears! Not with tears — Matt stumbles for the door. Nick’s outside, waiting, faithful.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Matt gets out. It’s hard making it to the elevator, harder still walking back to his room. “Do you — do you have a pull-out or something in your room?”

“I got a sofa,” says Nick. His eyes dart over and Matt realizes just how awful he probably looks.

He owes Nick the truth, kind of. Even if it scrapes his throat to get the words out. “I don’t. I don’t want to be alone.”

Nick throws a spare blanket on the couch. Matt splashes cold water on his face. They fall asleep to the sound of each others’ breathing, like in the indies. Life wasn’t simpler back then, Matt knows. The problems just looked different.

Turns out they haven’t changed their phone alarms, and Matt flinches awake to two stereo bleeps. Things are supposed to look better in the cold light of morning. Matt mostly just feels cold.

Morning routine. Right. They’ve got some… media thing today. He’ll check his calendar.

“You should tell him,” Nick says on his way to the bathroom — he gets first shower by longstanding agreement. He grimaces. “You and Adam weren’t quiet, no.”

“I can’t,” Matt says, doesn’t bother with a more elegant rebuttal.

“You know we have to talk to him today, right? We aren’t doing a panel without one member of the Elite because he’s feeling —” Nick cuts himself off like Matt’s glare is boring through the bathroom door.

“I’ll talk to him when I talk to him,” Matt says, and pulls his hairbrush through a particularly vicious knot. 

It’s sooner than he would like. Yeah, Kenny showing up at his — at Nick’s hotel room for reasons unknown about thirty minutes later, and Matt’s running on not enough sleep, and, and, “Nick, can you deal with this,” Matt yells.

Nick pops up from the other side of the bed like a gopher or something. “Yeah, hi Kenny.”

Matt squints. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not.” Nick seems… resolute. “You and —“ he darts a glance towards Kenny “— Adam, y’know, you weren’t _subtle_ last night, either.”

“Is this a set-up?” Matt says. The cogs in his brain are grinding, and he’s not sure he likes the sparks they’re throwing up.

“No,” says Kenny from the doorway, who looks about as confused and Matt feels but less suspicious. “Hangman said you had something to tell me.”

“Hangman,” Matt repeats, and it’s beating like a siren in his head that if Kenny doesn’t ask, he doesn’t have to say anything —

“You should ask him,” Nick says. He’s focusing suspiciously hard on packing his suitcase, and Matt would never cast aspersions against his brother, but there’s a lake in his chest and he thinks he might drown in it.

“Okay,” Kenny says, exaggerated and dismissive, “What do you have to tell me, Matt?”

It’s the kind of moment when the world’s supposed to stand still. Where his life’s supposed to flash before his eyes. The traffic keeps on rumbling by outside, immune to this hideous tableau. 

The lake’s bubbling now. Matt can’t stop feeling things unsaid welling in his throat, can’t even take his eyes off Kenny. Kenny, who’s in love with someone else and always has been. He’s glancing around the room now, looking for an explanation from him or Nick. Matt can’t give it to him. He has to.

Like a whirlpool in his chest, and Matt knows no one else can see it, but he can’t —

He can’t —

“I’m in love with you,” Matt whispers. It doesn’t hurt to say, and he wishes it did.

“What?” says Kenny.

Hangman was right for once. There’s no lake in his chest anymore and it’s left him hollow inside.

“What?” Kenny repeats, louder this time.

Matt can’t stop staring, looking for a change in Kenny’s face, a sneer or an I-love-you, anything except blankness like the wall behind him. From the other side of the room, Nick says, “You heard him.”

Kenny’s jaw works for a few seconds, but no words come out, and then he’s crossing the floor in a few sharp strides, shoes thumping on the beige carpet. His hand comes up and Matt doesn’t flinch back because he’s been kicked in the chest without flinching and he’s flung himself off the turnbuckle knowing he was going to hit the ground and he didn’t hesitate once.

Kenny’s hand comes to rest, warm and dry, on Matt’s jaw.

Matt is a dark cave and he can’t find words within him. Kenny’s looking at him, and Matt doesn’t know what he’s looking for. If he’s looking for anything.

The moment puffs out. Kenny’s hand comes down and then he looks as bewildered as Matt feels. He pulls back, then steps back, and Matt remembers that if he lets go of Kenny then Kenny will go. Dumb instinct drives him to grab a handful of the back of Kenny’s shirt.

“I don’t care if you’re in love with me,” Matt says, and it’s a sick burning pleasure to lie again. “But I need you to — to say something. Don’t just leave me here.”

“I don’t know what to say.” The back of Kenny’s head is very still. “Of course I love you, but that’s not enough.”

“Why not?” Nick says. Matt had forgotten he was there. From the way he flinches, Kenny had too.

“It’s never been enough before.” Kenny’s voice is weather-beaten, but his shoulders are pulled-back and defiant. His skin is warm under Matt’s knuckles, and he might be pressing back into the touch. 

Matt wants to see his face, but he always does. “You don’t give up. I’ve wrestled you. I know it.”

One of Kenny’s hand flutters towards his hair, and then he’s burying his hands in his curls and pulling, his back bowing even as his feet stay rooted in place, as his shirt stay balled in Matt’s fist.

“Why am I different?” Matt asks. “Why can’t you try?”

“You know why,” says Kenny, like the words are ripped out of him. 

Matt gives into gravity. Lets his hand fall, lets himself miss the warmth of Kenny’s skin. Waits for Kenny to leave, because he won’t keep chasing him, not when Kenny can’t stop chasing Kota.

He knew it was coming, but it rends something in him to see Kenny lope towards the door.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, then, “I should have left. I’m sorry I love you. Is that what you want to hear?”

Small sound from behind him, but Matt can barely think about Kenny, much less Nick.

Hand on the doorknob, Kenny pauses. “Why,” he shakes his shoulders like he’s trying to start something, “why would I want to hear that?” It’s almost Kenny’s angry-heel voice, but the terrible thing is that Matt knows him too well. Matt’s cleaned up his vomit and dragged him home, and Matt’s sat next to him while he shook and cried, and Matt calls bullshit.

“Kenny,” he says, and his voice is soft. “Kenny, I love you.”

He can just make out Kenny’s white-knuckled grip on the door handle.

“You —“ and Matt pauses to swallow, and there’s something like a bubble of happiness in his chest, soapy and effervescent. “You can’t change it.”

Kenny’s shoulders are heaving, and Matt said he wouldn’t chase him, but he crosses the room to crowd up against him anyway. At the last second, Kenny turns, and Matt sees forty emotions cross his face until he settles on fear and want. He’s breathing

“Kota’s not here,” Matt says, “and I am, and I love you.”

Matt can feel the air from the punched-out sound Kenny makes on his face. It’s nothing compared to the joy of Kenny looking at him, seeing what Matt needs him to see.

“You know I love you,” Kenny says.

Matt cuts him off. “And it’s enough. It’s enough.”

Kenny’s still shuddering, but he’s leaning closer to Matt now, like tidal gravity both ways. “I’ll try,” Kenny breathes. “That’s the best I can do.”

“Good enough for me,” Matt says, and leans in — “God, what face is Nick making right now?”

“It’s bad,” Kenny says. “It’s bad.”

“You have your own hotel rooms,” Nick says, and Matt really wants to keep burying his face in Kenny’s neck. “And we all have a panel in… two hours. And I’m not driving.”

“Of course not, nav guy,” Matt says. He pulls himself off of Kenny, claps him on the shoulder. Kenny’s eyes are wild, but not quite, and Matt thinks that even if it isn’t forever, it’s worth it just to have Kenny’s eyes on on him. Seeing what he wants him to see.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! god why is matt such a nightmare for me to write (i mean i know why. but i can complain about it)


End file.
